Abstract
The paper is focused on the coping strategies used by elementary school teachers to handle stress. The aim is to find out what the prevalence of positive, negative and neutral coping strategies is and if they correlate with burnout syndrome.
The typology of coping strategies was developed by Janke and Erdmann (2003) and use in the measurement SVF78. The positive coping changes the source of stress, while the negative coping helps just to overcome negative emotions without any change of stressor; the neutral coping can work in both ways.
The study consists of survey, including SVF78 and Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure (n = 2394), and of interviews (n = 59). The analysis shows that teachers report preference of positive coping over negative coping.
The most frequent strategy was Substitutional satisfaction (37%), other three positive coping strategies were used by one quarter teachers. The burnout syndrome correlates with coping, especially negative coping.
The correlation between burnout syndrome and positive coping was weaker but still statistically significant.